Excellent 'District 9' elevates sci-fi to another realm

Director: Neill Blomkamp

Cast: William Allen Young, Sharlto Copley

Cert: 15

An outstanding, original and thoughtful sci-fi drama that is full of humour, action and humanity.

A film that lifts the over-worked genre into an another ealm that stuns and uplifts and gets you thinking.

The story is set 20 years after an alien spacecraft lands in a South African slum and after waiting for a short period before examining the craft, humans find the visitors in poor shape.

A camp is set up near the craft and soon the aliens begin multiplying at a great rate, so much so that the authorities take over the running of the camp and try to move the inhabitants to outside Johannesburg.

A human sympathiser contracts a deadly virus with resulting problems.

In this most original of films we are in the terrible worlds of apartheid and the removal of the Native Americans from their safe places.

We are also looking at a world where strangers, those who are different, can be treated badly and without compassion ... yet this is told in the most compassionate of films that moves the genre barriers to wider reaches.

A quite excellent film.

Star Rating: 5/5